Category Archives: quantum computing

“Consumers are statistics. Customers are people.”–Stanley Marcus

The 2019 Consumer Electronics Show is underway in Las Vegas. Considering the 180,000 attendees, perhaps we should be calling it the Statistics Electronics Show, per Stanley Marcus

While you’re reading about all this week’s future-related news, don’t forget that you can subscribe to Seeking Delphi™ podcasts on iTunes, PlayerFM, or YouTube(audio with slide show) and you can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

“I would love to have a robot at home.”–Hugh Jackman

“I think I’d take a human butler over a robot one.”–Tom Felton

But right on cue with last weeks podcast #23, with robot psychiatrist Joanne Pransky, this week’s news is full up with robots. (See a YouTube link to the Pransky interview at the bottom of this page).

While you’re reading about all this week’s future-related news, don’t forget that you can subscribe to Seeking Delphi™ podcasts on iTunes, PlayerFM, or YouTube(audio with slide show) and you can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook

“The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.”–Neil DeGrasse Tyson

“This is the way the world ends. With a whimper, not a bang.”–TS Eliot

NDT is absolutley correct, but TS Eliot? Maybe not so much. The latest theory of how the universe will end is most decidedly with a bang: a second big bang, to be precise. But it’s probably a few trillion years in the future–assuming the math is correct.

While you’re reading about all this week’s future-related news, don’t forget that you can subscribe to Seeking Delphi™ podcasts on iTunes, PlayerFM, or YouTube(audio with slide show) and you can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook

Cosmology–According to a new Harvard study, the universe might end with a second big bang, caused by changes to the Higgs Boson. While the process may have already begun in some distant galaxy, it’s most likely to occur trillions of years in the future. So return those overdue library books now.

“It’s not going to do any good to land on Mars if we’re stupid.”–Ray Bradbury

“You cannot be serious.”–John McEnroe

Is Vladimir Putin serious? He’s really going to put Russians on the moon by next year? Live Russians? Human Russians? Russian manikins, maybe. Or how about those nested Russian dolls? I have my hunches about his obvious hyperbole. Like maybe he’s goading a certain Western leader I won’t name to take it seriously and go broke trying to compete with him. All the while what he’s really doing is focusing his resources on hacking democracy and wreaking havoc.

While you’re reading about all this week’s future-related news, don’t forget that you can subscribe to Seeking Delphi™ podcasts on iTunes, PlayerFM, or YouTube(audio with slide show) and you can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook

–Next Big Future reports on the progress–and relative merits–of AD-Astra’s VX200SSTM VASIMR® prototype space propulsion engine. Recent test firings have brought them one step closer to enabling earth to mars transit in as little as 4 to 6 weeks. SpaceX, with its BFR, has aims at making the transit at similar speeds.

“As an entrepreneur I like to know the next two or three things I might start a company on. For me it was robotics, bio-hacking, and quantum.”–whurley

As one of America’s leading technologists, when whurley speaks, people listen. Lots of them. His SXSW 2018 Intelligent Future keynote, titled The Endless Impossibilities of Quantum Computing, packed the largest ballroom at the Austin Convention Center. Just hours before the launch of his new company, Strangeworks, he provided the culmination of IEEE’s Tech For Humanity series. In between those two events, I was able to sit down in person for an exclusive interview. Special thanks to Interprose and IEEE for arranging this and several other interviews as SXSW. whurley heads IEEE’s working group on quantum computing.

“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”–Albert Einstein

For anyone who has watched the HBO series Westworld, the questions about creating machine consciousness run much deeper than “can we.” These include, should we? How will we treat it? How will it feel about its station as artificial life? Will we be able to control it, and is that ethical? And most profoundly, how will that change what it means to be human? The questions go beyond ethical to existential, and they were all addressed in the SXSW Intelligent Future track in a panel titled Can We Create Consciousness In A Machine? Not surprisingly, there were two techno-philosophers on the panel to explore these issues. They are David Chalmers, with NYU’s Center for Brain an Mind Consciousness, and Susan Schneider, with the Department of Cognitive Sciences at the University of Connecticut.

In this Seeking Delphi™ minicast, I speak with both of them about some of these issues. The third panelist mentioned in the podcast is Allen Institute physicist, Kristoff Koch.

The experts on the panel agreed…classical digital computers can’t create consciousness. Neural networks? Neuromorphic chips? And what about quantum computing? My interview with whurley on quantum computing, immediately following his SXSW keynote on the subject, is below.

SXSW minicast #3: whurley on quantum computing

In case you missed it, the YouTube slide show link for SXSW 2018 minicast #1, on covering sessions on quantum computing and self-driving car safety, is below.

As introduction to the podcast, some of this material is reprinted from a post earlier today. Scroll down for the audio file or links to access it on iTunes or PlayerFM.

“The promise of autonomous vehicles is great.”–Dan Lipinski

“My opinion is that it’s a bridge too far to go to fully autonomous vehicles.”–Elon Musk

Wait–what? The man who thinks he can send humans on a one way trip to colonize Mars within 10 years, thinks fully autonomous vehicles are out of our reach? The Elon Musk quote above is from 2013. I would be surprised if he still feels that way–but who knows?

Segue to this morning, at the Intelligent Future interactive track at SXSW 2018 in Austin, TX. Nobody on the panel entitled “Who takes the wheel on self-driving car safety” suggested we won’t get there. But there was plenty of caution on how, how fast, and how far we go in doing so.

Most notable were comments by Andrew Reimer of MIT. He foresaw a gap of 50-100 years before fully autonomous cars–no human intervention–take over the lion’s share of driving, globally. His issues were not just technical; they included trust, complexity, infrastructure and good old fashioned habit. He was certain that manual driving would probably never completely go away. He sighted the example of a high end sports car owners wanting the enjoyment of driving.

“It might just be hobbyists,” he said, but made it clear that in some shape or form, the human factor is likely to survive for a very long time.

Quantum Computing

A session on “Quantum Computing: Science Fiction to Science Fact,” was somewhat misnamed. While the history of its theoretical origins were recounted by D-Wave’s Bo Ewald, the session really focused on the current trends and developments leading toward a 10-year or so future horizon.

Bo Ewald talks about meeting Richard Feynman

Ewald recounted how iconic physicist Richard Feynman first imagined quantum computing in 1981, published the first paper on it in 1982, and gave a talk on it at Los Alamos in 1983. Ewald was head of computing at Los Alamos in 1983 and met Feynman at that talk. Sheldon Cooper, eat your heart out.

Humanizing Autonomy

A sessiojn autonomous systems covered much of the same ground that was addressed in Seeking Delphi podcasts with Richard Yonck (#12) and John C. Havens (#17). last year. But one of the presenters, Liesl Yearsly of Akin, had an interesting means of illustrating how the material will affect us.